war inc

Joan Cusack has made a career of finding the comedically crumbling foundations beneath what are at first normal-seeming characters. The two-time Oscar nominee also has a knack for making the most out of her roles, and in the new Lifetime movie Acceptance, both of her greatest skills are on display.

In the movie, which debuts on Saturday at 9PM ET, Cusack plays Nina Rockefeller, the hard-driving and high-strung mother of the movie's protagonist, Taylor (played by Mae Whitman of Arrested Development). The movie examines the pressure on high school overachievers to go to just the "right" college, and the story is told in a way that looks at it from both the students' and the parents' perspectives.

Cusack called me from Chicago (where she lives full-time) earlier this week. We talked about college pressures, if the notion of a Lifetime movie has changed, and why she loves working with her brother John so damn much.